Two cars, not one, appear to be at the center of the investigation into how the two brothers allegedly behind the Boston Marathon bombings carried out the fatal shooting of a police officer and the wounding of another during their final night rampage.
An NBC News probe over the past several days has established that the brothers used and then dumped a green Honda as well as a stolen SUV as they led police on a wild chase.
Massachusetts State Police, combined with local law enforcement, conducted a reenactment Thursday night at the scene of the April 18 shooting of Officer Sean Collier in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Key to that reenactment was a green Honda that appears to be the same car that was parked on Laurel Street, in Watertown, during the 200-round shootout there.
One brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was fatally wounded and later pronounced dead; the younger brother, Dzhokhar, escaped police and eluded capture for around 16 more hours.
Police said the suspects drove a green Honda to the location where Collier was shot and killed at the MIT campus in Cambridge. That shooting set off a string of incidents that ultimately led to the shootout between the suspects and police in Watertown.
After the Cambridge shooting, the suspects carjacked a Mercedes 350 SUV at gunpoint, according to a federal affidavit. Both suspects rode in the SUV to Watertown, the affidavit says.
However, photographs obtained by NBC News and eyewitness accounts given to NBC News producers indicate that both a green Honda and black Mercedes SUV were parked at the scene of the Watertown shooting. Several people who were near the scene that night said the Honda was positioned behind the Mercedes.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been moved from the hospital to a federal prison at Fort Devens, Mass., the government said on Friday.
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